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Joke about train line aside, I think Railway fits right in the spot that Heroku left. They have a nice UI, support deploy any kind of backend-involved apps as

Joke about train line aside, I think Railway fits right in the spot that Heroku left. They have a nice UI, support deploy any kind of backend-involved apps as long as it can be built into a docker container. While many PaaS out there seems to prioritize frontend only apps. And they have a free plan, so people can just quickly deploy some POC before decide if it's good to move on. Anyone know if there is any other PaaS that come with a low cost starter plan like this (a side from paying for a VPS)?

vcanales 7mo ago
I use https://github.com/coollabsio/coolify https://github.com/coollabsio/coolify on a VPS for this.
Tankenstein 7mo ago
Render.com has a similar value proposition. I’ve used them and am pretty happy. Railway seems to have more bundled observability built in, that i’d like in render.
mstank 7mo ago
VPS + Dokploy gives you just as much functionality with an additional performance boost. Hostinger has great prices and a one-click setup. Good for dozens of small projects.
- dabbz 7mo ago
  +1 for dokploy, it's very flexible and allows me to setup my sites how I need. Especially as it concerns to the way I setup a static landing page, then /app goes to the react app. And /auth goes to a separate auth service, etc.
czhu12 7mo ago
Been building an open source version of railway at https://canine.sh https://canine.sh. Offers all the same features without the potential of a vendor lock-in / price gouging.
- Onavo 7mo ago
  The docs seem to be non existent. Is the canine yaml documented? You want docs like this: https://coolify.io/docs/applications/ci-cd/github/setup-app https://coolify.io/docs/applications/ci-cd/github/setup-app https://coolify.io/docs/applications/build-packs/dockerfile https://coolify.io/docs/applications/build-packs/dockerfile https://coolify.io/docs/applications/build-packs/overview https://coolify.io/docs/applications/build-packs/overview Plenty of screenshots and exact step by step instructions. Throwing an "example git repo" with no documentation won't get you any users. Put your shoes into that of a Heroku/Vercel user. DevOps is usually Somebody Else's Problem. They are not going to spend hours debugging kubernetes so if you want to sell them a PaaS built on Kubernetes, it has to be fool proof. Coolify is an excellent example, the underlying engineering is average at best (from a pure engineering point of view it's a very heavy app that suffers from frequent memory leaks, they have a new v5 rewrite but it's been stuck for 2 years) but the UI/UX has been polished very well.
  - czhu12 7mo ago
    Yeah working through documentation still. The goal isn’t so much to replace coolify. Mostly born out of my last start up that ran a $20M business, 15 engineers, with about 300-1000qps at peak, with fairly complex query patterns. I think the single VPS model is just too hard to get working right at that scale. I think north flank / enterprise applications, would be a better comparison of what canine is trying to do, rather than coolify / indie hackers. The goal is not take away kubernetes, but to simplify it massively for 90% of use cases but still give full k8s api for any more advanced features
- imiric 7mo ago
  > Computing is getting cheaper Heh. Looks like a great product, although maybe mention some honest reasons to not use it, instead of the passive-aggressive marketing ones.
ktaraszk 7mo ago
Yes, have you seen miget.com by any chance? You can start with the free tier, and can have a backend with a database for free (256Mi plan). If you need more, just upgrade. They redefined cloud billing. Worth checking.

vcanales 7mo ago

I use https://github.com/coollabsio/coolify https://github.com/coollabsio/coolify on a VPS for this.

Tankenstein 7mo ago

Render.com has a similar value proposition. I’ve used them and am pretty happy. Railway seems to have more bundled observability built in, that i’d like in render.

mstank 7mo ago

VPS + Dokploy gives you just as much functionality with an additional performance boost. Hostinger has great prices and a one-click setup. Good for dozens of small projects.

dabbz 7mo ago
+1 for dokploy, it's very flexible and allows me to setup my sites how I need. Especially as it concerns to the way I setup a static landing page, then /app goes to the react app. And /auth goes to a separate auth service, etc.

czhu12 7mo ago

Been building an open source version of railway at https://canine.sh https://canine.sh. Offers all the same features without the potential of a vendor lock-in / price gouging.

Onavo 7mo ago
The docs seem to be non existent. Is the canine yaml documented? You want docs like this: https://coolify.io/docs/applications/ci-cd/github/setup-app https://coolify.io/docs/applications/ci-cd/github/setup-app https://coolify.io/docs/applications/build-packs/dockerfile https://coolify.io/docs/applications/build-packs/dockerfile https://coolify.io/docs/applications/build-packs/overview https://coolify.io/docs/applications/build-packs/overview Plenty of screenshots and exact step by step instructions. Throwing an "example git repo" with no documentation won't get you any users. Put your shoes into that of a Heroku/Vercel user. DevOps is usually Somebody Else's Problem. They are not going to spend hours debugging kubernetes so if you want to sell them a PaaS built on Kubernetes, it has to be fool proof. Coolify is an excellent example, the underlying engineering is average at best (from a pure engineering point of view it's a very heavy app that suffers from frequent memory leaks, they have a new v5 rewrite but it's been stuck for 2 years) but the UI/UX has been polished very well.
- czhu12 7mo ago
  Yeah working through documentation still. The goal isn’t so much to replace coolify. Mostly born out of my last start up that ran a $20M business, 15 engineers, with about 300-1000qps at peak, with fairly complex query patterns. I think the single VPS model is just too hard to get working right at that scale. I think north flank / enterprise applications, would be a better comparison of what canine is trying to do, rather than coolify / indie hackers. The goal is not take away kubernetes, but to simplify it massively for 90% of use cases but still give full k8s api for any more advanced features
imiric 7mo ago
> Computing is getting cheaper Heh. Looks like a great product, although maybe mention some honest reasons to not use it, instead of the passive-aggressive marketing ones.

ktaraszk 7mo ago

Yes, have you seen miget.com by any chance? You can start with the free tier, and can have a backend with a database for free (256Mi plan). If you need more, just upgrade. They redefined cloud billing. Worth checking.